


Sustenance

by the_ragnarok



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Body Horror, Cannibalism, M/M, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-15
Updated: 2011-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-17 00:29:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ragnarok/pseuds/the_ragnarok
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody in their business comes by their skills for free. There is always someone to train you, to remake you in the image of your chosen profession. Their world is a place of ownerships. The best you could hope for was a long, comfortable leash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sustenance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anatsuno](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anatsuno/gifts).



> Inspired by [a thread where the verb "secret" was discussed for its similarity to "secrete",](http://bironic.livejournal.com/242324.html) especially in past tense, and went downhill from there. Contains oblique references to violence against children and other general unpleasantness.  
> Beta'd by GloriaMundi, who is amazing and made entirely of win.

There's a cold, hard tension forming in the bottom of Arthur's stomach. He ignores it. That kind of thing happens a lot when they're planning a job.

"Dale will be _here_." Cobb indicates the mark's location on a map. "Eames will assume the brother's shape, come to the mark and convince him to go with Ariadne."

Arthur tunes him out. The plan is the same as it ever is: Eames is to deceive the mark, Ariadne is to lead him astray, Yusuf to make him pliant, Cobb to take what they came for. Arthur's role, as far as anybody ever troubled to verbalize it, is "in case". In case something goes wrong, in case the plan needs to be redone in a hurry. In case they succeed.

Eames is looking as bored as Arthur feels. Eames' work is largely done ahead of time. Yusuf and Ariadne's side of things is a more delicate combination of planning and improvising. Arthur's work is such that there's little point, for him, in formulating anything in advance.

So he sits there, committing everybody's parts to mind, because you never know when that's going to come in handy. Waits for everyone to leave before clawing his shirt open and feeling at his stomach.

The gun, when Arthur pulls it out, isn't quite set in its form, wobbly and fleshy in his hands. Within seconds, though, it solidifies into hard metal and plastic. The grip is paneled in bone. Arthur tries not to think too much about that.

~~

He’s with Eames, both of them preparing for the job. The others have made themselves scarce. Arthur, who knows too well the unsettled expression Cobb wears when looking at Eames in mid-transformation, doesn't blame any of them.

Eames frowns at his own arm. Dale's brother is a skinny noodle of a man, barely half Eames' weight. Eames' arm is thicker than the brother's upper thigh. Eames shakes his head sadly. "Nothing else to be done, is there?" He takes a large knife and pares down his upper arm, shaving away flesh that falls in solid, malleable chunks, expertly shaping the remaining part. His skin slides like wax under the pressure of his fingers.

Arthur's own preparation scheme is slightly more palatable. He checks and re-checks the maps, their armaments, Ariadne projections of her course and the formula for the compound Yusuf means to use on the mark. Then he grimaces and scratches his thigh. Arthur's not going to take off his pants with Eames right there next to him, he's _not_.

Eames looks at him, and Arthur waits for the inevitable mocking, resigned. Eames doesn't say anything, though, just purses his lips in concentration and returns to whittling his legs down to size.

Eventually the pressure gets to be too much. Arthur grits his teeth and says, "Would you mind giving me a minute?"

Eames raises his eyes then, startled from his contemplation of his own reshaped body. "It's nothing I haven't seen, you know," he says, but he leaves the room.

Fucking guns. Arthur pulls out the one forming near his hipbone, hissing when it won't come unstuck for a long moment. He stares at it, then puts it in his thigh holster. He's already feeling a little too light where the gun was, but if he puts it back in now, his body will just generate another one.

Weapons are a stress thing for Arthur. They're a side effect, not planned, more annoying than useful. In theory, it sounds well and fine to be able to literally pull a gun out of his ass. In practice, getting cravings for heavy metals isn't exactly fun.

The discarded pieces of Eames' flesh are lying on the table, where they'll turn into something disgusting by morning. Eames can afford to be careless with bits of himself. Arthur can't, and maybe that's what makes him pick them up and store them.

The skin of Arthur's chest parts easily, a secret compartment where he safely can put things, where they won't turn into anything else or spoil. Arthur takes Eames' spare flesh and conceals it in there.

Eames doesn't come back to the room until Arthur opens the door and beckons him. Eames' nicer to him these days. Once upon a time, Eames would tease Arthur for his lack of imagination, would ask Arthur sharp questions he didn't want to know the answer to. Then again, once upon a time Arthur would have left Eames' unwanted pieces to lie there and rot. Things change.

"Ready?" Arthur asks. Eames nods. His body language is different, too, sharper and more jumpy in this body. Arthur is reminded that Eames' abilities are a skill as much as an artificially fostered talent. What Arthur can do, nominally, is no more than they made him for; that's all right, though. He’s learned other skills to make up for it.

The gun grows colder against his hip. "Let's go, then." Arthur grabs his coat and they're off.

~~

Technically, Arthur's what they call a renderer. His only official duty is minor, at the absolute end of events, only useful at all if everything else worked according to plans. Until then, Arthur makes himself useful. He trails Ariadne, follows her as she blends into the crowd and preparing for Eames-as-the-brother to introduce her to Dale.

Ariadne's an engaging person. That's half her ability right there, that she's able to approach the mark with a big smile, and while she's taking his arm in his he doesn't even notice the path they’re walking on splitting from the actual sidewalk.

It's not a physical split – at least, that's what Ariadne says. In actuality, the path she forms is still the same as the one that was there to begin with, just... copied over, somehow.

"Think of it as going sidewise," Ariadne told him once. "Perpendicular to reality." Then she and Yusuf got into an argument on whether 'Perpendicular to Reality' was a good name for a band, and so the metaphysics of this were never fully explained to Arthur.

The sidewalk Ariadne created rolls upwards, a slow gentle slope that Arthur wouldn't even notice if he weren't paying direct attention to it. The mark is completely oblivious, nodding at whatever Ariadne's talking about even as the noises of the crowd fall away to make place for the silence of the side roads.

Arthur's worked with other pathmakers before. Among other reasons, Arthur likes working with Ariadne because the paths she walks through _aren't_ mazes of unfathomable horrors interspersed with memories of childhood traumas.

Instead, Ariadne walks them through what looks like residential neighborhoods, where all the houses have walls in warm earth tones and dense green hedges. The air smells of jasmine and car exhaust. It's nice to see how someone in their line of work can be so well-balanced.

The mark's eyes are a little glassy, Arthur notes. Good. People don't generally expect to find themselves walking on roads that are half-metaphor and half-not-there-at-all, and what people don't expect they often end up being blind to. Normality defines them, and they don't understand undefined things.

~~

By now, Arthur's so unused to normality that he's not sure anymore if he can recognize it from three paces on a clear day.

It's part of this, he thinks, that makes him wary of Saito. Saito is well-groomed, meticulously clothed. Apart from his obvious wealth, there is nothing out of the ordinary about him, but his eyes are calm and implacable enough to leave Arthur torn between terror and unwilling admiration.

It's also what makes Arthur like Saito, despite everything. It's been years since Arthur worked with anyone who didn't have something monstrous about them. You get used to it.

Saito steeples his fingers. "Gentlemen," he says. That doesn’t bode well. All their conversations with Saito start like this, and none of them ever end well.

Cobb is wary as well. He'd better be. Saito is good at keeping up the pretense of polite equality, but no one is fooled. They are in Saito's debt, and deep down Arthur knows they'll never be out of it.

If it weren't for the unsteady nature of what they do, Arthur might have been bored with how predictable everything is. Saito makes a show of calling in a favor. Cobb makes a show of thinking it over. Arthur, whose showmanship never amounted to much, sits silent and tries to find objections to raise.

There's no point in protesting that whatever Saito wants is impossible. Saito can afford the impossible, and he expects only the best. Times like this almost make Arthur resent their teammates. Ariadne can go back to her combined degree/training program, Yusuf can return to his lab and Eames to his life of sporadic crime, but Arthur literally owes Cobb's life to Saito. Arthur's never getting out of this.

~~

They're about halfway to the place where Yusuf is waiting for them when Arthur secretes two more guns. One of them falls neatly from his upper arm into his hand. The other, in his calf, falls on the ground with a clatter loud enough to distract the mark.

"What – " Dale's eyes are wide, only now taking in their surroundings. He turns on Ariadne, his expression shifting from pleasant befuddlement to something sharp, the promise of violence evident in the sudden twist of his mouth.

Arthur tosses Ariadne the gun he's holding. Ariadne catches and turns it on Dale without even blinking. "Let's keep it friendly, huh?" Her tone actually is friendly. Arthur wishes he knew how she does that.

Dale looks aside, taking in their surroundings. "Where the fuck are we?" He sounds hoarse. His shoulders slump.

"Not important," Arthur says, and he aims his other gun at Dale.

"Where the hell did you come from?" Dale sounds tired more than violent. Resigned. Arthur can relate. "What is this, are you trying to kidnap me?"

"Not at all." Arthur doesn't do friendly, but he can do calm and unemotional like nobody's business. "Just come with us, Mr. Dale, and I assure you everything will be fine."

Ariadne produces a pair of handcuffs and raises and eyebrow at Arthur. Arthur nods, and she cuffs Dale while Arthur's gun is pointed, unwavering, at Dale's head.

They have a script for this possibility, actually, for the somewhat likely scenario where the mark startles into awareness while the pathmaker leads him to the scene of the crime. It happens in three extractions out of five. (Arthur keeps count of statistics. It's part of his unofficial duties.)

Still, Arthur wasn't about to go into it unless Dale started it. So of course that’s what happened.

"Where are you taking me?" Dale is being led by Ariadne, who slipped her arm into the crook of his elbow, because Ariadne does shit like that.

"Not far." Arthur's voice is measured. This can still stop here, if the mark leaves it alone. "We'll get there in half an hour or so."

"Fuck this." Dale regains some sort of energy then, almost snarling as he speaks. He twists away from Ariadne. "If you're going to shoot me, do it now."

"We're not going to do that now." Arthur is very, very fast, when he wants to be. He's trained himself to be. By the time the _now_ leaves his lips, his gun is pressed against the back of Dale's neck.

Dale swallows audibly. "All right," he says. He's trying for bored. It's not working. "Can we move this along, then? If you're going to shoot me – "

"This is as fast as we're going to go," Arthur says. It's useless to try and hurry pathmakers.

A merciful few minutes pass, during which Dale shuts the hell up, but too soon he's talking again. "Who put you up to this? Was it Richmond?"

"Richmond's dead." If Ariadne's surprised that Arthur knows the vital statistics of Dale's chief rival and former patron, she says nothing. "You don't have any enemies except time." The _that you know of_ is left unspoken.

The jangling of Dale's handcuffs is loud in the silence. After a few minutes more, Dale says, "Can't you take these off, at least? You have me where you want me."

This time, it's Ariadne who answers. "Did you need to tie Margo Bechler's hands?" The sharpness of her voice is all the more striking for its previous warmth.

Dale doesn't answer, because of course he didn't. Dale is a former wrestler and Margo Bechler was seven years old.

It's strange, sometimes, to remember that the work they do can be used to accomplish something helpful. It's not all theft and petty corporate struggles.

Arthur wishes he could find that comforting. But all it really means is that sometimes the job is dealing with greedy, heartless assholes. And sometimes, instead, it's being alone in the dark with a man whom even monsters would call a monster.

~~

It wasn't always like this. It used to be better when Mal was alive. At least, that's what Arthur tells himself. That's what he remembers, but memory is unreliable, and nobody knows that better than Arthur.

Arthur is trapped, now, because Cobb is trapped and Arthur is bound to Cobb. There is nothing Arthur can do in this business without Cobb, and Cobb is useless without Arthur. But once there was Mal, and Cobb and Mal could do anything together.

Mal was an extractor in her own right, better than Cobb because she could render the memories she extracted by herself. Mal could fish a thought out of your eyes and trap it in a mirror, where it flickered and ran like a silent movie when you watched it.

The sequences Mal got by herself were always a little blurry. Professionally speaking, this wasn't a good thing, but they were beautiful and Arthur would keep them when he could, when they weren't needed.

(Arthur has a box full of mirror fragments that he carries around with him for no good reason. They're cracked and all he can see in them is his own face, twisted. But he likes to take them out and look at them and think, _maybe_ – )

But Mal and Cobb together – that was sharpness and art combined. No job was too difficult, no achievement too high. They could do anything, and Arthur counted himself lucky to tag along and bask in the shade of their glory when he could.

There is, however, such a thing as _too_ good.

Nobody in their business comes by their skills for free. There is always someone to train you, to remake you in the image of your chosen profession (chosen for you, rather than the other way around, but still). There is always a price.

Mal's greatest problem, Arthur always thought, was that she truly believed in all that _live free or die_ crap. That wasn't beneficial in their line of work. Their world was a place of ownerships, where everyone a step down from God had someone they reported to. The best you could hope for was a long, comfortable leash.

But Mal called Arthur, and her voice crackled over the bad line as she said, "If you don't come for us, Dom and I will find the highest roof we can and jump." And Arthur went, because he knew better than to ignore his leash when it was tugged. Left his other projects and allies by the roadside, called every favor he was owed and some he had to owe in return, and went.

In the end, Mal jumped anyway, and Arthur was left with Cobb and a box full of mirrors, both of which were in shards, both of which have made Arthur bleed more than once.

~~

Yusuf's waiting for them where the their path comes back to the ground. He's half-hidden in shadows, hard to notice unless you know where to look. Ariadne waves at him cheerfully.

Yusuf always makes sure to come out behind the marks, to never let them see him. Arthur's not sure how much of this is out of a wish for anonymity. It's part of the reason, certainly. The other part, likely, is that people tend to flinch looking at Yusuf, and that would make his job harder than it needs to be.

Arthur’s seen his chemical designs for this job, and was suitably impressed. If Eames’ vocation is a skill, Yusuf’s is the reflection of a lifetime’s worth of study. Custom-made psychotropics are hard to synthesize and harder to use, even for someone with Yusuf’s specific modifications.

The mark stiffens, shudders and collapses as a needle sticks in his neck. Yusuf pulls it out and takes a step back, lets Arthur lay Dale on the ground. Ariadne's looking a little pale. She's not used to Yusuf yet.

The smile Yusuf aims at her is friendly and hopeful. "I hope your way here was uneventful."

"Near enough," Arthur answers for her, rising and wiping dust from his pants. Yusuf gives him a glance, then focuses back on trying to pull a glove on his right hand. He only takes that glove off on jobs. His left hand is gloved, too, and Arthur's never seen him take it off in all the years they work together.

Yusuf curses. "Bloody needles." They protrude from the fingertips of his right hand, retractable like cat's claws, if claws had a mechanism that occasionally jammed and left them exposed. Arthur reaches for Yusuf's hand, waiting for a nod of approval.

Instead, Yusuf shakes his head, tightly saying, "I've got it, thanks." Arthur lets his hand drop.

"Is your other hand like that, too?" says Ariadne, who doesn't know when to leave well enough alone.

Arthur's about to snap at her on that subject when Yusuf says, "It's different." He offers no explanation as to how.

"I'd like to see it," Ariadne says, and contrary to Arthur's expectations, Yusuf smiles and says, "Maybe later."

Then Cobb finally shows up, with Eames trailing behind him, and the job's officially on the road. About damned time. Arthur's getting hungry.

~~

Everything comes from somewhere. This is a universal truth. The laws of conservation of matter aren't going to stop existing for a bunch of freaks. Arthur makes guns, and brings abstract concepts into a physical form, and none of that comes out of fucking air.

The ordinary hunger he doesn't mind. He keeps candy on his person at all times, and energy bars and water bottles. He's a little annoyed about the small spool of copper wire he has to keep at hand, as well, but it's not that bad. Better than getting woozy and weak.

Trouble is, Arthur's body isn't always as picky as Arthur would like. He tried, before, ignoring the pangs of hunger, eating like a normal human being. But when he does that, his body rebels. He finds holes on the insides of his pant legs, his fingerprints burned into any surface he let his hand rest on for too long.

He kissed Ariadne once, on the cheek. He remembers her startled "Ow!", hand flying up to her face, her wide eyes looking at him. The raw mouth-shaped mark on her skin, an angry, painful red.

He doesn't know why he did it, refuses to think about how it made his legs steady and his heartbeat slow.

He hasn't kissed anyone for over a year, and for more than five years before that. It wasn't entirely his idea then, either.

~~

Cobb closes his eyes in concentration, running his hands over the mark's face. Slowly but surely, something white starts oozing from the corner of the mark's eye. Cobb pinches a bit of it and pulls, his movements careful and precise.

Then he frowns and lets go. The little white worm he made crawls back into the mark's eye socket. Wrong memory, likely. It's not like Arthur can actually tell.

Cobb tries again, opening the mark's mouth a little, dragging a thin white rope out of his throat. It goes on and on, until Arthur wishes he could look away, but finally the end of it snaps. Cobb rolls it between his thumb and index finger, turning to look at Arthur.

"Open up," Cobb says, and pops the little white lump in Arthur's mouth, not wincing when Arthur's mouth exacts payment. Cobb's fingers taste of scar tissue. Arthur swallows.

They make their way back, quiet, in pairs – Arthur following in Cobb's footsteps, Yusuf and Ariadne talking in low voices, the mark leaning on Eames in a passable imitation of drunkenness. Arthur's tired as fuck, almost tired enough to wish he could let go of his pride and his balance, lean on someone or just fall over.

No. The job isn't done yet.

When they come back to the warehouse – all of them but Eames, who left to dispose of the mark – Arthur doesn't even bother with common courtesy, shoving his jacket off, his shirt, pawing at the skin of his chest.

He cracks a rib away, pulling a handful of glossy photos out. Here it is, their goal. Cobb snatches them from Arthur's hand, flipping through them with rapid satisfaction. Ariadne is staring at the floor. Yusuf settles down with a book, leaving everybody else to their own devices.

Arthur grits his teeth and realigns his bones. This does not come naturally to him; ironically enough, this is the only part of his skills that reflects what he was designed to do.

Cobb stares at the photos for a minute, then nods with grim satisfaction. "All right. We have it. Well done, everyone."

There are disadvantages to living in Saito's service, but inefficiency is not one of them. The money's wired into their various accounts within minutes after Cobb faxes the photos, with the originals placed into an envelope for Arthur to express-mail to Japan.

Yusuf offers Ariadne a ride to the airport. Cobb takes a taxi, after giving Arthur one last nod. Arthur will be hearing from him later, no doubt.

Eames comes back when they're all gone, and Arthur's nearly finished cleaning up the warehouse behind them.

"The money's transferred, everything's fine," Arthur says. "You can leave."

Eames sits down. "Maybe I don't want to."

It's no business of Arthur's where Eames goes and what he does with himself, so he ignores Eames in favor of booting up his laptop. His flight leaves in eight hours. He doesn't have anywhere better to be, and the warehouse has wi-fi.

Eames walks to a mirror Arthur hung up for him earlier, the better to practice his form, and takes his shirt off.

Some forgers that Arthur knew had to sculpt themselves back into shape, every time, but Eames just grows everything back. The entire side of Eames' arm is shiny-pink, smooth as candle wax.

Arthur must have made a sound, because Eames turns around to look at him. "It's nothing you haven't seen before," he says, almost gently.

Of course it isn't. That's not why Arthur's reacting to this. He blinks hard, and remembers, and unbuttons his own shirt to open up his chest.

He hands Eames the spare bits of flesh that he left behind. "I thought you might want them."

Eames is looking unaccountably moved. "Why, thank you," he says. "This will make everything ever so much easier."

Arthur nods, and goes back to his computer. Or means to, anyway. He finds himself stumbling over nothing, grabbing at a nearby chair to steady himself.

Then Eames' strong arms are wrapped around him. "There," Eames says, not letting go until Arthur's standing on his own again. Even then, his fingers stay where they are, tracing the soft skin at the bottom of Arthur's stomach.

"Don't," Arthur says, but he doesn't pull away.

Eames does, instead, stepping back. "Where are your guns, darling?"

Ariadne's kept one of them. Arthur should have asked for it back, but couldn't bring himself to. He hates how it makes him sound, hates having to think about it - _oh, by the way, that firearm you're holding is probably made of my internal organs._

The other he gave to Cobb – the one Eames is holding out at him right now, as a matter of fact. Arthur takes it and pushes his pants down to reveals his hip, too tired to feel self-conscious. He presses it into his skin, wincing when it doesn't go easily.

Suddenly, Eames is standing far too close to him. "May I?" he says, holding a hand out. Arthur gives him the gun, stands patiently as Eames fits it back, holds it in place until it's absorbed back into Arthur's thigh.

"You need to relax," Eames says softly. "This isn't good for you."

Well, of course it fucking isn't, but what the hell does he want Arthur to do about it? "I can deal with it," Arthur says tightly.

"No one's saying you can't." Eames stays a careful step away from him. It feels like Eames wants to come closer, although this is probably only wishful thinking. "But there's no shame in asking for help."

Arthur snorts. "Of course there is." If one can't be self sufficient, one is two steps away from dead. In their line of work, certainly, and from what Arthur's seen of the world, it's pretty much always like that.

"None in taking it when it's offered, then," Eames says. He's too close to Arthur, who knows what Eames is offering and doesn't want to say no.

He lets himself take it, then, selfish and greedy as he presses his mouth to Eames'.

Arthur remembers distantly what kissing used to feel like, what it was like to have someone's tongue in his mouth to suck on. What there is now is only warmth, the blood-red taste of Eames' lips breaking open, the raw inside of his mouth when Arthur's done with it.

He pulls away after, afraid to look at Eames' ruined face, at the open wound where Arthur kissed him. Eames pulls away to the table and takes the pieces of his arm that Arthur put there. He tears out a chunk, moulding it and sticking it to his face. The wax-gray of it changes until it's flushing pink, curving into a smile, until Eames looks just like he did moments ago.

"Come back here, you," he says, fond, and Arthur does.

He feels better now. It should be safe to touch him – safe to kiss him, even, but Arthur's not taking chances. Instead he runs his hands over Eames' arm, the oddness of it where Eames carved it up. It feels like scar tissue, like the abused ends of Cobb's fingers.

It's odd to remember that Eames is malleable only to his own hands, that when Arthur's fingers press they'll leave bruises behind, not dents.

~~

Eames used to tease Arthur about his lack of imagination. Arthur, for his part, used to bare his teeth at Eames in an expression that was nothing like a smile and not reply.

He was like that in Bratislava, too, at least in the beginning. That was before their extractor, Kava, turned to Arthur with an even expression and said, "Disarm, please." Never mind that, for Arthur, this request was nothing short of a fucking physical impossibility; it was just plain _rude_ , and Arthur said so.

But then their persuader, Chellani, stared Arthur in the eye, and Arthur couldn't move.

Eames cleared his throat with a noise about two notches down from a warning growl. "I'm sure this isn't necessary."

"Fuck necessary," Kava said. She was the kind of person who never raised her voice. It was dead flat then, when she spoke. "You hear things about him. I don't like working under those conditions."

An array of responses to that flitted through Arthur's head. _Neither do I_ , first and foremost. _Then why did you hire me?_ was a pretty fucking pertinent one, too. _Fuck you and the fucking batshit horse you rode in on_ – it wasn't Arthur at his most professional, but he was being paralyzed and frisked, so give him a fucking break.

Eames was polite at first, if unrelenting. When Kava pulled the first gun from Arthur's stomach, he turned vitriolic. "This is bloody unprofessional," Eames all but snarled. "I hope you don't think anyone would be working with you in the future."

"It's not me I'm worried about," Kava said, dead fucking calm as she pulled another gun from Arthur's hip. "How many of these fucking things does he have?"

 _As many as necessary_ , Arthur thought. _As many as you'll take out. As much matter as I have in me._

They started coming out wonky after the fifth gun, oddly shaped and colored. Arthur collapsed to his knees after the seventh, unable to keep standing even as Chellani's gaze held him immobilized. Eames cursed, standing still, apparently paying no mind to the gun aimed at him, looking at Arthur.

Arthur made no sound throughout it all. Possibly he just couldn't. Certainly it was a stupid, empty, meaningless little victory, but it was what he had.

By the time they let him go, he'd lost count of how much they took out. Chellani looked away but he still couldn't move, couldn't do anything but lie there and pant. It took all his strength just to keep his eyes open.

They'd cuffed Eames before leaving, and Arthur heard him mutter and curse as he worked his way free. Arthur waited for him to get up and turn away, leave Arthur to die there in peace. He didn't even have the energy to be surprised when Eames sat down next to him, so he had to settle for mildly puzzled.

It took over an hour for Eames to slot all the guns they could find back into Arthur. By that time Arthur could stand up, just barely.

"Is there anything." Eames stalled, uncertain. It wasn't like him. "What would help?"

Arthur, too tired and miserable to care, said, "Kiss me."

He was, at the time, only reasonably certain he wouldn't hurt Eames. If he did, Eames gave no sign of it. But then, it was only a brief brush of lips; enough to send a spark of energy through Arthur, enough to leave Eames' lips red and raw-looking, but no more.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," Arthur said, and Eames complied with alacrity.

~~

When he steps away from Eames, the disappointment is already written on the other man's face.

"You're going to run off again," Eames says with disgust.

"I don't have a choice," Arthur says. But it's not true and they both know it, so he amends, "Not an acceptable choice. I can't leave Cobb."

For a horrible moment, he thinks Eames will ask him to, will give him an ultimatum that Arthur's not sure how he'll answer. But all Eames does is sigh and look down, defeated.

"When you've had your leash untied," Eames says, "call me."

 _And not until then_ is heavily implied. "Everyone's got a leash," Arthur says.

"Some of us slipped the collar." But if Eames is trying to advertise the carefree, unfettered life, he's failing miserably. He looks wounded, literally and figuratively, beaten.

"Nobody's really free," Arthur says. "Not even you."

Eames doesn't contest this. "Can't help but try, though, can I?"

Arthur shrugs and turns away rather than watch Eames leave.

~~

When Saito next calls, it's not for a request to do the impossible. This time, he wants them to do the unthinkable.

"One can take a memory out of a mind," Saito says, as if they were discussing philosophy rather than breaking into someone's brain. "But can one put it in there?"

It's been tried, extensively, and always resulted in failure. Arthur's read all the literature. He's about to open his mouth to say so when Cobb says, "It can be done."

Arthur's reasonably sure that Cobb's insane. Saito thinks Cobb is a mad genius, and by the look he's giving Cobb right now his judgment is slowly leaning towards the first part of that statement. Saito obviously expected them to fight, to argue about this. This calm serenity Cobb's exuding must be worrying Saito as much as it worries Arthur.

It's telling that Saito's unsettled enough to actually mention a price. "What would you want for it?"

That may as well be a rhetorical question. Everyone knows what Cobb wants. His children back. His old life. But Saito's looking at Arthur as he says it, and the unspoken message is clear: _You handle him._

"I've been thinking of going back to the States," Arthur says slowly. "Or maybe Kenya." Cobb's slanting glances at him like he's got no idea what Arthur's talking about. Saito nods once, sharply.

Arthur walks out of that meeting strangely lightheaded. He blames it on the cold weight at the bottom of his stomach even as his hand slips into the back pocket of his pants, fingering the worn piece of paper he's holding there.

It's the name of a city, and an address, and a phone number, and for Arthur it bears the memory of Eames' face, hopeful in spite of everything.


End file.
